Social Media Marketing (Student Number:334887) . Dongzhou, Chen
-Introduction
The past decade has experienced an obvious and massive development in customers’ styles of living directly closely tied with the growth of internet technologies and following surging usage of social media in the market. Social media is becoming extensively adopted as marketing strategies of management team within companies and overtaken the traditional media to a large extent. Social media websites and apps incorporate imagery with sounds, languages, logos which makes the platforms more conveniently for users to adopt because of their unique affordance qualities. So many enterprises in different scales, even Fortune 500 enterprises are adopting the mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other social medias to boost the direct interactions with wider range of users. The impact of social media marketing provides the company a better understanding and improve both the brand perspective and customer attitudes towards the products, increasing the respond speed to retain the satisfactory level therefore increase the profit of the transactions and strength the overall effectiveness of marketing. This wiki page will give a brief introduction of the social media history and different channels, analysis whether it is a new trend or not as well as the roles it acts in the management practice. Case studies will be included to support the topic about how social media marketing is relevant to the current society.
-Overview
Evolution of social media marketing
Social media is gradually turning into part of people’s lifestyle and the medium for online communication: it attained almost 85% of the Internet population aged above 14 all over the world which symbolised the biggest percentage of single utilisation of the Internet. (comScore, 2011). People tend to spend about 24% of their time browsing all sorts of websites or communicating through social media sites, which no less than 50% of online users take advantage of social media platforms to keep an eye on their favourite brands on purpose. (Amber King, 2013) In 1997, SixDegrees.com was founded after the Six Degree Theory that is one of the very first website to allow users to personalise profiles and send private messages. The social networking website MySpace witnessed the first social media surge in the early 2000s, while over 100 million people had the access to engage online. In 2004, Facebook was launched that becomes a social media giant that owns over 2 billion users nowadays. In the same year, Flickr was created as one of the most popular photo sharing sites. In 2006, Twitter is invented as the inspired product of text messaging that enables people to communicate in short bursts of information (140 words maximum), which these listed new online activity options gradually took place of the original media patterns. One important variation that begin to take place right in this period is that social media became increasingly widespread in businesses as the advantages began to become obvious to business owners. Qualman (2011) stated that over 90 % of businesses utilise social networking as their marketing strategies for branding activities. Websites were starting to add their contact addresses and many other facilities were being integrated, covering social media.
Social media platforms
In the current competitive marketing environment, we can found so many social media platforms that have been created and applied by companies to fulfil the need of all sorts of activities. The most used ones are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and then there is Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and so many other forms. As we can see from the two tables below, Facebook and Messenger/WhatsApp which the same brand owns firmly dominants the first place as the most demanded social media platforms worldwide both in the website and mobile app form in recent years, with YouTube and QQ Chat one in the second place respectively.
The major tendency in social marketing field is changing all the time. The remarkable evolution and success of Snapchat (renamed as Snap in 2017) seized the marketing opportunities by transforming user expectations in the way of bringing back the interaction in the vision that is better moment-concentrated which can lead to generate a more vividly live pictures. The app itself will concentrated more on the improvement through mobile-centric applications while it innovated the concept of vertical videos that applied into the other platforms to go along with the app as well.
Traditional media versus New social media marketing
The range of traditional media is large and it is defined as any form of mass communication available before the promotion of digital media, such as television, radio, newspapers, billboards, books, etc. That traditional media has its advantages since it has achieving success for thousands of businesses for decades. However, the spending of this type of marketing spending is limited to firms at certain scales in the current marketing environment.
Traditional media can be quite cost-inefficient, especially for smaller companies that may cause a higher potential risk of any investment. In terms of social media, it is considered as the cheapest form of advertising available nowadays, which enables all the firms to allocate large amounts of capital cost with minimal risk. The most valued platforms are all have rather low advertising costs, which gives better chance to distribute advertisements to a segment in high demand. What’s more, additional costs could occur with each traditional medium, while time is the only potential fixed cost that may happen in social media marketing.
Traditional media are exposed to a very broad range of customers while social media provides a method for advertisers to accurately target specific audiences. The latter way results in the right message being delivered to the relevant people in time at the right promoting stage. Social media allows both the company and consumer to engage and communicate in a two-way format, which immediate action can be taken to spot the latest trend and therefore improving and promote new products and services faster. In addition, traditional elements can always incorporate into social media campaign flexibly.
-Why it is new?
New is defined as “recently created or having started to exist recently” in the Cambridge Dictionary. However, implying the philosophy concept, whether social media is new or not cannot simply judged by when it is originated in the history or if it is a current innovative mainstream. The definition of whether social media is new largely depends on the possibility for its development in the future, or follow the natural changes the society generates. The existence of social media was considered as a way for individuals to engage and make friends online a long time ago. However, the companies gradually adopted the social media as the ways of marketing strategies to promote their brand and products once they understand the business value of behind the rapid rise of the online society. It became a new concept. Nielsen (2012) provides a clear picture that other than communicating with family and friends, a diversity of purposes including following the celebrities, shopping on different platforms, enjoying various entertainments, which all reflects the diverse nature of social media it offers. Therefore, social media itself is not new as the idea was introduced. However, it became new again once businesses adopt it as part of their marketing strategies even in the future due to the continuously Internet evolvement.
-Why it is a trend?
Trend is defined as a “common evolvement or change in the situation or in the way that people are behaving” in the Cambridge Dictionary. Traditional media is now gradually being replaced by social media which is an Internet-bases technology applied by businesses due to the ultimate expectations driven by the online users.Information concluded from a recent Pew study shows that around 75% of the Internet users also uses social media channels. According to the SEJ infographic, at least 90% of businesses adopt social media as their marketing medium, which among them 69% have already achieved obtaining more users from the Facebook platform, while 35% for the Twitter pages. “Facebook has been dedicated to set up a link between its online advertising activity to its offline selling process, which eventually accelerates the consuming actions in a more flexible way” (Kelly Davis, 2016) It is predicted the with the obvious strong growth since 2010, digital-based promotion of the brands will probably reach the top-used media form in 2017, reaching about forty percent of the total global market share. (Global Advertising Market, 2016)In the meantime, the mainstream social media channels have all continuously launching new methods for people to enjoy and through the more live contents from the developed technologies that becomes more personalised and vivid to increase the engagement and interaction rate of customers. Therefore, social media marketing is a new trend for both businesses and customers as well.
-How it acts and influences the management practice?
With social media developing in new communicative trend, the marketing team of the firms developing strategy by concentrating on establishing direct communication with customers, relevant sales services, promotion actions and utilisation within the company to accommodate any unexpected transformations. (Katona, Z. and Sarvary, M, 2014) The ultimate objective was to get closer to customers, in the meantime, seizing all the other opportunities to get wider press coverage, achieving higher engagement of the employees, improving brand awareness etc. For example, the company can use different platforms to provide customers more choice and approaching methods of the services, which enhances the dependence as well as the interactivity between two parties that can therefore build a positive long term relationship. For consumers in the current society, their demand and satisfaction level decides the incentive and flowing action of the expenditures. In practice, the consistency of customers’ need satisfaction nowadays can be maintained by the way of adjusting the details of products, marketing process as well as realising the deep desire of users within the management practice of the companies. Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011) stated a clear point that the improvement of marketing strategies within a firm is essential to establish a better goal and flexibly utilised the various functions of social media platforms. Diverse searches also back up the idea of which the agreement between the website and advertisement method can lower the unpleasantness of online privacy infringement as well as strength the speed and qualities of feedbacks towards users(Edwards, Li, & Lee, 2002).
Dell Computers, which recognised as the leading enterprises that launched its own supportive webpages and public forums online, has always been at the cutting edge of the social media movement as it succeeds in turning the achievement of the social media strategies into both a profit generator and an engaging tool for users. The company taking risk of testing new uses of websites and by improving the understanding of how they affect customers after the first failed attempt of launching a useless Twitter page. In return, it found a more effective way to promote and attract users that leads to one and a half million Twitter followers acquired quickly in a short period of time. At the time when the management team aware that increasing number of its Twitter followers use the site as a platform to complain about the problems of products or sales issues, they listened and quickly react to the solve the confusions by launching a website called Dell Cares as well as similar apps on its Facebook page that both connect the team directly with the users to developed an online community that allow customers to reach out to the support team to resolve service issues. A high success rate of 98 percent is achieved.
In addition, Dell's social media tools don’t exclusively concentrate on the Business-to-Customers field, the B-to-B market is also taken care of which makes the company easier to build brand awareness and communicate with existing and potential B-to-B customers.Social media serving as a portal in management practices is to help improve the direct relationships between company and consumers to set up long-term goals. Achieving and holding supports from management team within the company and therefore reaching a higher-level effectiveness of the promoting process requires the factors of frequent renovation of the monitoring and measurement procedure, which is also very important.
-Why it is the current relevant to society?
While customers are adopting new online trend in a much faster pace, marketing teams are seeking the most effective ways for promotion, websites and mobile apps are observing more innovative methods to make money, all the changes indicated that social media is turning into a more useful marketing tool for companies. People are no long satisfied with the simply information published on the posts or price details of products, the digital transformation enables users to go after a more vivid and authentic recognition that makes them feel that they can be part of the experience by using various social media platforms. As a result, virtual reality (VR), live streaming videos and more moment-seizing posts are innovated to meet the needs of users in the current society. These implements add gamification (add some fun elements) to the apps and platforms, which increases the possibility of engagement percentage of around 100 to 150 percent.
Case study of Mercedes Benz’s
Mercedes Benz’s 2016 Campaign displayed on the YouTube channel illustrates a successful example by using social media campaign. Since luxury brands tend to set up their objectives to target specific audience which defined as the ‘rich’ ones, it could possibly lose its potential customers to some extent. In this case, the company created a video that bring the audience a direct and real visual effect in a 360-degree environment. The element of 3D effect added into the video on the YouTube channel makes the brand appears to be more approachable and using experience more exciting, especially to younger-aged viewers. The marketing strategies does not always follow the rules of using mainstream platforms to sell products, the success of marketing in recent years is driven by incorporating thefore-fronted digital technology with telling the brand story in an authentic manner.
Case study of ASOS
ASOS, the biggest British online clothing retailer has always been heavily relying on social media. Instead of using the traditional marketing strategies like emailing newsletters to the subscribed users or simply posting pictures on the Instagram pages. The company observes and re-evaluating the current online marketing demand to improve and innovate all the components of business by taking immediate actions from manufacture to digital campaign to the brand’s most recent goals. Since customers nowadays do not solely focus on the selling products, a new concept called ‘ASOS insiders’ was introduced by to adopt the new changes quickly: the company sponsored with some individual influencers who have large base of audiences from different countries by creating a specific account that presents images of the fashion bloggers wearing brand’s clothing and the related promotion links. This idea not only brings forward enormous followers on the Instagram but also broaden the targeted market without costing too much on big advertising campaigns. Changes of the marketing strategies have stimulated the sales profit internationally, comparing with other online retailers.What’s more, the company pay close attention on its customer experiences as well so that more experience can be gained to improve the services and therefore better for the long-term engagement of its existed and potential customers.
-What are the limitations of social media marketing?
The development in website researches leading the change of the straightforward digital transformation gradually starting to focus more on to users’ experience and marketing services. One concern that it brings is the possible conflict of the two natures when the companies decided to combine marketing strategies and social media together. Customers tend to use social media websites for communication, while the marketing team use social media solely to promote the brand and to sell things. These two intentions conflict with each other. (Zhu, Y. Chen, H, 2015)
Marketers have been complaining that brands these days must pay extra to the social media platforms for advertisements if they want to pursue the specific audience, particularly regarding the mainstream platform, Facebook. Based on a survey of 395 marketers, Forrester found that Facebook surprising creates lower business value than any other digital marketing platforms. These complaints were a result of poor advertising capabilities that unable to properly apply social data. On average, the platform only shows each brand’s posts to approximately 15% of its fans that is considered as quite inefficient. Twitter also planned to implement a new feed-style program, which users will be shown the content that would be the most popular or the focused on instead of seeing any tweets in one continuous real-time feed as it the change will seem to squeeze more advertisement profits from brands for marketers. What’s more, customers are expecting something different in the social media environment—more detailed, more diverse and exciting pieces of content that spread out in a slower pace. Similarly, Pinterest also heading into the mode of monetising its platform using ‘Promoted Pins’. However, all the developments are based on the need of customers and correlated with business objectives in long term, rather than blindly looking for quick wins in this competitive market environment.
Business-to-Business(B2B) companies also face some problems to tackle associated with social media marketing (Mehmet, M and Clarke, R. 2016). Since the nature of the business pattern is marketing themselves to businesses, the management team might treat the promoting strategies as unattractive or being unnecessary since there is no direct link between companies and users. The successful B2B enterprises get the right idea of using the appropriate social media platforms and considering customers as their end-users instead any business themselves, which therefore by recognising the right strategies positively increasing brand awareness, having a better connection with customers and industries, and possibly even increase sales revenues.
-Conclusion
It is humans’ nature that communicating with each other is of great importance no matter how the society changes. With the quick evolution of new Internet technologies, the trend of using social media will carry on and it will be excited to witness any big improvements in the near future. The concept of social media itself is no longer a new idea, but as it has been widely applied into the current marketing contents of the business that brings the new trends of using platforms as ways to establish a two-way format between the enterprise and customers. However, the results of social marketing strategies are sometimes less than satisfactory. In the general marketing environment, incidents like Brexit crisis, new election for the US president, even ISIS attacks, so many political uncertainties may cause a depression of the frequency rate of social media usage. Unlike traditional media, social media websites and apps deliver opportunities and challenges as well for the management teams in the companies. Within the company, employees need to have training lessons to gain experience and understand the most updated information related to the social media trends to engage with customers in a quicker way. Customer relationship Management (CRM) also can be applied to monitor the communication with both targeted and potential customers. This method analysis data like users’ shopping history collected from various channels within the company to improve services and possibly hold positive long-term relationships with users as well as stimulating the growth rate of the sales revenue.
Katona, Z. and Sarvary, M. (2014). Maersk Line: B2B Social Media— “It's Communication, Not Marketing”. California Management Review, 56(3), pp.142-156.
Mehmet, M. and Clarke, R. (2016). B2B social media semantics: Analysing multimodal online meanings in marketing conversations. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, pp.92-106.
Table of Contents
-Introduction
The past decade has experienced an obvious and massive development in customers’ styles of living directly closely tied with the growth of internet technologies and following surging usage of social media in the market. Social media is becoming extensively adopted as marketing strategies of management team within companies and overtaken the traditional media to a large extent. Social media websites and apps incorporate imagery with sounds, languages, logos which makes the platforms more conveniently for users to adopt because of their unique affordance qualities. So many enterprises in different scales, even Fortune 500 enterprises are adopting the mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other social medias to boost the direct interactions with wider range of users. The impact of social media marketing provides the company a better understanding and improve both the brand perspective and customer attitudes towards the products, increasing the respond speed to retain the satisfactory level therefore increase the profit of the transactions and strength the overall effectiveness of marketing. This wiki page will give a brief introduction of the social media history and different channels, analysis whether it is a new trend or not as well as the roles it acts in the management practice. Case studies will be included to support the topic about how social media marketing is relevant to the current society.
-Overview
Evolution of social media marketing
Social media is gradually turning into part of people’s lifestyle and the medium for online communication: it attained almost 85% of the Internet population aged above 14 all over the world which symbolised the biggest percentage of single utilisation of the Internet. (comScore, 2011). People tend to spend about 24% of their time browsing all sorts of websites or communicating through social media sites, which no less than 50% of online users take advantage of social media platforms to keep an eye on their favourite brands on purpose. (Amber King, 2013)
In 1997, SixDegrees.com was founded after the Six Degree Theory that is one of the very first website to allow users to personalise profiles and send private messages. The social networking website MySpace witnessed the first social media surge in the early 2000s, while over 100 million people had the access to engage online.
In 2004, Facebook was launched that becomes a social media giant that owns over 2 billion users nowadays. In the same year, Flickr was created as one of the most popular photo sharing sites. In 2006, Twitter is invented as the inspired product of text messaging that enables people to communicate in short bursts of information (140 words maximum), which these listed new online activity options gradually took place of the original media patterns.
One important variation that begin to take place right in this period is that social media became increasingly widespread in businesses as the advantages began to become obvious to business owners. Qualman (2011) stated that over 90 % of businesses utilise social networking as their marketing strategies for branding activities. Websites were starting to add their contact addresses and many other facilities were being integrated, covering social media.
Social media platforms
In the current competitive marketing environment, we can found so many social media platforms that have been created and applied by companies to fulfil the need of all sorts of activities. The most used ones are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and then there is Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and so many other forms.
As we can see from the two tables below, Facebook and Messenger/WhatsApp which the same brand owns firmly dominants the first place as the most demanded social media platforms worldwide both in the website and mobile app form in recent years, with YouTube and QQ Chat one in the second place respectively.
The major tendency in social marketing field is changing all the time. The remarkable evolution and success of Snapchat (renamed as Snap in 2017) seized the marketing opportunities by transforming user expectations in the way of bringing back the interaction in the vision that is better moment-concentrated which can lead to generate a more vividly live pictures. The app itself will concentrated more on the improvement through mobile-centric applications while it innovated the concept of vertical videos that applied into the other platforms to go along with the app as well.
Traditional media versus New social media marketing
The range of traditional media is large and it is defined as any form of mass communication available before the promotion of digital media, such as television, radio, newspapers, billboards, books, etc. That traditional media has its advantages since it has achieving success for thousands of businesses for decades. However, the spending of this type of marketing spending is limited to firms at certain scales in the current marketing environment.
Traditional media can be quite cost-inefficient, especially for smaller companies that may cause a higher potential risk of any investment. In terms of social media, it is considered as the cheapest form of advertising available nowadays, which enables all the firms to allocate large amounts of capital cost with minimal risk. The most valued platforms are all have rather low advertising costs, which gives better chance to distribute advertisements to a segment in high demand. What’s more, additional costs could occur with each traditional medium, while time is the only potential fixed cost that may happen in social media marketing.
Traditional media are exposed to a very broad range of customers while social media provides a method for advertisers to accurately target specific audiences. The latter way results in the right message being delivered to the relevant people in time at the right promoting stage.
Social media allows both the company and consumer to engage and communicate in a two-way format, which immediate action can be taken to spot the latest trend and therefore improving and promote new products and services faster. In addition, traditional elements can always incorporate into social media campaign flexibly.
-Why it is new?
New is defined as “recently created or having started to exist recently” in the Cambridge Dictionary. However, implying the philosophy concept, whether social media is new or not cannot simply judged by when it is originated in the history or if it is a current innovative mainstream. The definition of whether social media is new largely depends on the possibility for its development in the future, or follow the natural changes the society generates.
The existence of social media was considered as a way for individuals to engage and make friends online a long time ago. However, the companies gradually adopted the social media as the ways of marketing strategies to promote their brand and products once they understand the business value of behind the rapid rise of the online society. It became a new concept. Nielsen (2012) provides a clear picture that other than communicating with family and friends, a diversity of purposes including following the celebrities, shopping on different platforms, enjoying various entertainments, which all reflects the diverse nature of social media it offers. Therefore, social media itself is not new as the idea was introduced. However, it became new again once businesses adopt it as part of their marketing strategies even in the future due to the continuously Internet evolvement.
-Why it is a trend?
Trend is defined as a “common evolvement or change in the situation or in the way that people are behaving” in the Cambridge Dictionary. Traditional media is now gradually being replaced by social media which is an Internet-bases technology applied by businesses due to the ultimate expectations driven by the online users.Information concluded from a recent Pew study shows that around 75% of the Internet users also uses social media channels. According to the SEJ infographic, at least 90% of businesses adopt social media as their marketing medium, which among them 69% have already achieved obtaining more users from the Facebook platform, while 35% for the Twitter pages. “Facebook has been dedicated to set up a link between its online advertising activity to its offline selling process, which eventually accelerates the consuming actions in a more flexible way” (Kelly Davis, 2016)
It is predicted the with the obvious strong growth since 2010, digital-based promotion of the brands will probably reach the top-used media form in 2017, reaching about forty percent of the total global market share. (Global Advertising Market, 2016)In the meantime, the mainstream social media channels have all continuously launching new methods for people to enjoy and through the more live contents from the developed technologies that becomes more personalised and vivid to increase the engagement and interaction rate of customers. Therefore, social media marketing is a new trend for both businesses and customers as well.
-How it acts and influences the management practice?
With social media developing in new communicative trend, the marketing team of the firms developing strategy by concentrating on establishing direct communication with customers, relevant sales services, promotion actions and utilisation within the company to accommodate any unexpected transformations. (Katona, Z. and Sarvary, M, 2014)
The ultimate objective was to get closer to customers, in the meantime, seizing all the other opportunities to get wider press coverage, achieving higher engagement of the employees, improving brand awareness etc.
For example, the company can use different platforms to provide customers more choice and approaching methods of the services, which enhances the dependence as well as the interactivity between two parties that can therefore build a positive long term relationship. For consumers in the current society, their demand and satisfaction level decides the incentive and flowing action of the expenditures. In practice, the consistency of customers’ need satisfaction nowadays can be maintained by the way of adjusting the details of products, marketing process as well as realising the deep desire of users within the management practice of the companies. Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011) stated a clear point that the improvement of marketing strategies within a firm is essential to establish a better goal and flexibly utilised the various functions of social media platforms. Diverse searches also back up the idea of which the agreement between the website and advertisement method can lower the unpleasantness of online privacy infringement as well as strength the speed and qualities of feedbacks towards users(Edwards, Li, & Lee, 2002).
Dell Computers, which recognised as the leading enterprises that launched its own supportive webpages and public forums online, has always been at the cutting edge of the social media movement as it succeeds in turning the achievement of the social media strategies into both a profit generator and an engaging tool for users. The company taking risk of testing new uses of websites and by improving the understanding of how they affect customers after the first failed attempt of launching a useless Twitter page. In return, it found a more effective way to promote and attract users that leads to one and a half million Twitter followers acquired quickly in a short period of time. At the time when the management team aware that increasing number of its Twitter followers use the site as a platform to complain about the problems of products or sales issues, they listened and quickly react to the solve the confusions by launching a website called Dell Cares as well as similar apps on its Facebook page that both connect the team directly with the users to developed an online community that allow customers to reach out to the support team to resolve service issues. A high success rate of 98 percent is achieved.
In addition, Dell's social media tools don’t exclusively concentrate on the Business-to-Customers field, the B-to-B market is also taken care of which makes the company easier to build brand awareness and communicate with existing and potential B-to-B customers.Social media serving as a portal in management practices is to help improve the direct relationships between company and consumers to set up long-term goals. Achieving and holding supports from management team within the company and therefore reaching a higher-level effectiveness of the promoting process requires the factors of frequent renovation of the monitoring and measurement procedure, which is also very important.
-Why it is the current relevant to society?
While customers are adopting new online trend in a much faster pace, marketing teams are seeking the most effective ways for promotion, websites and mobile apps are observing more innovative methods to make money, all the changes indicated that social media is turning into a more useful marketing tool for companies. People are no long satisfied with the simply information published on the posts or price details of products, the digital transformation enables users to go after a more vivid and authentic recognition that makes them feel that they can be part of the experience by using various social media platforms. As a result, virtual reality (VR), live streaming videos and more moment-seizing posts are innovated to meet the needs of users in the current society. These implements add gamification (add some fun elements) to the apps and platforms,
which increases the possibility of engagement percentage of around 100 to 150 percent.
Case study of Mercedes Benz’s
Mercedes Benz’s 2016 Campaign displayed on the YouTube channel illustrates a successful example by using social media campaign. Since luxury brands tend to set up their objectives to target specific audience which defined as the ‘rich’ ones, it could possibly lose its potential customers to some extent. In this case, the company created a video that bring the audience a direct and real visual effect in a 360-degree environment. The element of 3D effect added into the video on the YouTube channel makes the brand appears to be more approachable and using experience more exciting, especially to younger-aged viewers. The marketing strategies does not always follow the rules of using mainstream platforms to sell products, the success of marketing in recent years is driven by incorporating thefore-fronted digital technology with telling the brand story in an authentic manner.
Case study of ASOS
ASOS, the biggest British online clothing retailer has always been heavily relying on social media. Instead of using the traditional marketing strategies like emailing newsletters to the subscribed users or simply posting pictures on the Instagram pages. The company observes and re-evaluating the current online marketing demand to improve and innovate all the components of business by taking immediate actions from manufacture to digital campaign to the brand’s most recent goals.
Since customers nowadays do not solely focus on the selling products, a new concept called ‘ASOS insiders’ was introduced by to adopt the new changes quickly: the company sponsored with some individual influencers who have large base of audiences from different countries by creating a specific account that presents images of the fashion bloggers wearing brand’s clothing and the related promotion links. This idea not only brings forward enormous followers on the Instagram but also broaden the targeted market without costing too much on big advertising campaigns. Changes of the marketing strategies have stimulated the sales profit internationally, comparing with other online retailers.What’s more, the company pay close attention on its customer experiences as well so that more experience can be gained to improve the services and therefore better for the long-term engagement of its existed and potential customers.
-What are the limitations of social media marketing?
The development in website researches leading the change of the straightforward digital transformation gradually starting to focus more on to users’ experience and marketing services. One concern that it brings is the possible conflict of the two natures when the companies decided to combine marketing strategies and social media together. Customers tend to use social media websites for communication, while the marketing team use social media solely to promote the brand and to sell things. These two intentions conflict with each other. (Zhu, Y. Chen, H, 2015)
Marketers have been complaining that brands these days must pay extra to the social media platforms for advertisements if they want to pursue the specific audience, particularly regarding the mainstream platform, Facebook. Based on a survey of 395 marketers, Forrester found that Facebook surprising creates lower business value than any other digital marketing platforms. These complaints were a result of poor advertising capabilities that unable to properly apply social data. On average, the platform only shows each brand’s posts to approximately 15% of its fans that is considered as quite inefficient. Twitter also planned to implement a new feed-style program, which users will be shown the content that would be the most popular or the focused on instead of seeing any tweets in one continuous real-time feed as it the change will seem to squeeze more advertisement profits from brands for marketers. What’s more, customers are expecting something different in the social media environment—more detailed, more diverse and exciting pieces of content that spread out in a slower pace. Similarly, Pinterest also heading into the mode of monetising its platform using ‘Promoted Pins’. However, all the developments are based on the need of customers and correlated with business objectives in long term, rather than blindly looking for quick wins in this competitive market environment.
Business-to-Business(B2B) companies also face some problems to tackle associated with social media marketing (Mehmet, M and Clarke, R. 2016). Since the nature of the business pattern is marketing themselves to businesses, the management team might treat the promoting strategies as unattractive or being unnecessary since there is no direct link between companies and users. The successful B2B enterprises get the right idea of using the appropriate social media platforms and considering customers as their end-users instead any business themselves, which therefore by recognising the right strategies positively increasing brand awareness, having a better connection with customers and industries, and possibly even increase sales revenues.
-Conclusion
It is humans’ nature that communicating with each other is of great importance no matter how the society changes. With the quick evolution of new Internet technologies, the trend of using social media will carry on and it will be excited to witness any big improvements in the near future. The concept of social media itself is no longer a new idea, but as it has been widely applied into the current marketing contents of the business that brings the new trends of using platforms as ways to establish a two-way format between the enterprise and customers.
However, the results of social marketing strategies are sometimes less than satisfactory. In the general marketing environment, incidents like Brexit crisis, new election for the US president, even ISIS attacks, so many political uncertainties may cause a depression of the frequency rate of social media usage.
Unlike traditional media, social media websites and apps deliver opportunities and challenges as well for the management teams in the companies. Within the company, employees need to have training lessons to gain experience and understand the most updated information related to the social media trends to engage with customers in a quicker way. Customer relationship Management (CRM) also can be applied to monitor the communication with both targeted and potential customers. This method analysis data like users’ shopping history collected from various channels within the company to improve services and possibly hold positive long-term relationships with users as well as stimulating the growth rate of the sales revenue.
-References
Davies, A. (2017). Why 'ASOS Insiders' Is a Stroke of Influencer Marketing Genius. [online] Blog.ometria.com. Available at: http://blog.ometria.com/why-we-cant-get-enough-of-asos-insiders [Accessed 2 Aug. 2017].
Dictionary, n. (2017). new Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [online] Dictionary.cambridge.org. Available at: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/new [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
Dictionary, t. (2017). trend Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [online] Dictionary.cambridge.org. Available at: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/trend?q=TREND [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
Dreamgrow.com. (2017). Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites and Apps [online] Available at: https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/ [Accessed 2 Aug. 2017].
E-consultancy. (2017). 11 impressive influencer marketing campaigns. [online] Available at: https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/69196-11-impressive-influencer-marketing-campaigns/?utm_content=buffer24fc1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Accessed 2 Aug. 2017].
E-consultancy. (2017). Change is coming for digital agencies. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/69177-change-is-coming-for-digital-agencies/?utm_content=bufferffefa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Accessed 28 July. 2017].
Forbes.com. (2017). Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmyrohampton/2017/01/03/5-social-media-trends-that-will-dominate-2017/#31942bb66ffe [Accessed 26 July. 2017].
Katona, Z. and Sarvary, M. (2014). Maersk Line: B2B Social Media— “It's Communication, Not Marketing”. California Management Review, 56(3), pp.142-156.
Keenan, J. (2017). Dell Uses Social Media to Drive Sales and Improve Customer Experience. [online] Target Marketing. Available at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/6-ways-dell-uses-social-media-drive-sales-improve-customer-experience-25008416/all/ [Accessed 28 July. 2017].
LYFE Marketing. (2017). 75 Benefits of Social Media Marketing. [online] Available at: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/roi-benefits-social-media-marketing/ [Accessed 28 July. 2017].
LYFE Marketing. (2017). Traditional Media vs. Social Media Advertising - Cost Comparison. [online] Available at: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/traditional-media-versus-social-media/ [Accessed 25 July. 2017].
Mehmet, M. and Clarke, R. (2016). B2B social media semantics: Analysing multimodal online meanings in marketing conversations. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, pp.92-106.
Morrison, K. and Morrison, K. (2017). The Growth of Social Media: From Passing Trend to International Obsession [Infographic]. [online] Adweek.com. Available at: http://www.adweek.com/digital/the-growth-of-social-media-from-trend-to-obsession-infographic/ [Accessed 01 Aug. 2017].
Ons.gov.uk. (2017). Internet access – households and individuals- Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/internetaccesshouseholdsandindividuals/2017 [Accessed 3 Aug. 2017].
Smart Insights. (2017). Global Social Media Statistics Summary 2017. [online] Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/ [Accessed 24 July. 2017].
Staff, D. (2017). The history of social networking. [online] Digital Trends. Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-social-networking/ [Accessed 26 July. 2017].
The Guardian. (2017). Pay to play: the end of free social media marketing? [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/15/pay-to-play-the-end-of-free-social-media-marketing [Accessed 1 Aug. 2017].
Vizard, S., Hobbs, T., Hobbs, T., Hobbs, T., Reporters, M., Vizard, S., Vizard, S., Roderick, L., Roderick, L., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Woollen, P., Joy, S., Joy, S., Joy, S., Joy, S., Joy, S., Joy, S., Joy, S. and Joy, S. (2017). Asos: We don’t know if social media is a threat or an enabler - Marketing Week. [online] Marketing Week. Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/07/14/asos-dont-know-social-media-threat-enabler/?utm_content=bufferae2d5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Accessed 1 Aug. 2017].
Webpagefx.com. (2017). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing. [online] Available at: https://www.webpagefx.com/internet-marketing/social-media-marketing-advantages-and-disadvantages.html [Accessed 2 Aug. 2017].
Zhu, Y. and Chen, H. (2015). Social media and human need satisfaction: Implications for social media marketing. Business Horizons, 58(3), pp.335-345.